Mayor Mamdani tamps down talk of battle with Menin, UFT over paraprofessional pay boost

Mayor Mamdani on Monday dismissed talk of a battle brewing between his administration, Speaker Julie Menin and the influential teachers union after he took the City Council to court over what the lawsuit called an illegal pay boost for public school paraprofessionals.

The mayor brought the legal challenge last week over claims that a United Federation of Teachers-backed local law championed by Menin violates state collective bargaining rules. The legislation gives a large one-time bonus to low-paid teachers’ aides who help children with disabilities.

“The relationship (with Menin) continues as it’s been, and the talks (with the UFT) have been productive,” Mamdani told reporters at an unrelated news conference in Queens, his first remarks on the issue since his return from vacation. “They’ve been productive because we have a shared understanding of the critical role that paraprofessionals play in our public school system and in our city.”

Mamdani supported the bill as a mayoral candidate, but changed his tune once in office. The Council unanimously passed $10,000 bonuses in four installments, meaning the legislative body had enough votes to override a potential mayoral veto. Cognizant of that fact, the mayor let the bill lapse into law last Wednesday without his signature.

But within hours, Mamdani filed the lawsuit in a Manhattan trial court.

The episode has put the mayor in the unenviable position of picking a public fight with the powerful UFT over the pay of teacher assistants who can earn as little as $32,600 each year. It also risked straining his relationship with Menin, who’s regularly gone toe-to-toe with Mamdani, and members of the Council who criticized the mayor for fighting the law.

UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who endorsed the mayor only after his Democratic primary win, told The New York Times last month that he’s willing to go to “all-out war” against Mamdani on paraprofessional pay. He’s also criticized the administration over its handling of sweeping curriculum changes in English and math.

In an interview with the Daily News last week, though, Mulgrew was more measured in his response, praising Mamdani for personally getting involved in talks and reserving his harshest criticism for city agencies instead of the mayor himself.

Mamdani has continued to say his opposition is not to raising the pay of paraprofessionals, but to the way the Council did so through a one-time bonus outside of collective bargaining. The current contract is set to expire in November 2027.

“We are looking at ways to permanently address this inequity,” Mamdani said Monday.

A spokesman for the Council and Menin referred The News to their statement last week, in which the speaker and Councilwoman Carmen De La Rosa (D-Manhattan), the bill’s sponsor, pledged to “vigorously defend the law.” The Council maintains the one-time bonuses are necessary to solve a shortage of at least 1,600 paraprofessionals.

The Council estimates the pay bump will cost $325 million in 2027 over two fiscal cycles — a price tag the Mamdani administration has warned could rise if other municipal workers seek bonuses too.

Menin, a centrist Democrat, has repeatedly challenged Mamdani, a democratic socialist, on progressive causes, including housing vouchers and now paraprofessional pay. The unexpected dynamic has launched a series of headlines that speculate about the speaker’s ambitions and willingness to move to the left to highlight the mayor’s vulnerabilities.

But Menin has also come to Mamdani’s defense. Most recently, Menin, who lost her mom to 9/11-related cancer, condemned a push among some to exclude the mayor from a 25th-anniversary remembrance of the Sept. 11 attacks.

With Josephine Stratman